Stories & moments: What We Learnt Writing Grave-Breaker

When ‘Loni and I were tidying up working on Grave-Breaker, and thought to take a moment to pray around what the Lord was birthing, I particularly felt the Lord remind me of a particular day some five years prior. 

‘Loni is easily one of my favourite people and we’ve had some very memorable and special God-moments over the several years that we’ve known. 

But there was this particular day when we were hanging out in my office. I thought we were right around the ‘ingredients’ you would desire for a God-inspired creative moment. Fingers running across a keyboard, taking some time out to worship and just see whether the Lord would breathe some creativity out of it. I really desired that He would! On my personal side of that day was that it was quite a tough season of my life in those early days of church planting, and I really felt that God breathing a fresh song or two in our worship in that moment would be perfect and really refreshing and encouraging. But creativity just wasn’t quite happening that day. It all felt mechanical and uninspired. 

There are those times when you really feel God has to show up in specific ways and particular things must happen. I’ve walked with God quite a bit to at least know that He’s not in any way under the pressure that we are, or that we try to put Him in. But the truth is when you’re in those moments, all of that knowledge seems to go out of the window. You just feel somewhat ‘out-of-step’ when the God show up doesn’t happen the way you want.

As I felt the Lord remind me of that day and how somewhat disappointed I felt that nothing special happened then, I felt the Lord impress to me the beauty of just staying and growing and trusting through the journey.

I could never have known that that moment actually did carry seeds for a time like this. God was actually breathing in those moments, even though it felt dry. When two or three get together in a God direction, He really is always working in those very moments! He’s simply not constrained to our limited sense of value with what He does.

Writing Grave-Breaker feels like a timely fruit of several seeds. ‘Loni and I have written a few songs together over the years, but I’m learning that songs are not really birthed in the moment you pick an instrument or a pen to write or create.

The songs lie in a story you had always been walking faithfully. It is that story that God really just blesses and breathes on.

Isn’t that really what every God expression is? From careers to ministries, from building lives to building homes, I think God expressions are an outplay of blessed God-stories- it’s all about staying faithful to the story day in and day out, and then coming to the parts where some fruit to your faithfulness pops out.

For us, it’s an ongoing story of countless moments, and many, many conversations, and of many ordinary days of just showing up to serve, and of learning, and of conflicts, and resolutions, and of life in its two million and one expressions.

I think our stories are a lot more weighty than we often realize.

May we never undermine our stories because we’re simply overwhelmed by a pursuit of fruit in each moment.

If you asked me in any of those disappointing mechanical moments, I would never have thought we could pull together a song off a phone call in the middle of a COVID-19 lockdown- a phone call interrupted several times by crying kids and some fluctuating network, and what have you. 

Our expressions will actually look more like the stories that carry them, than the moments that birth them.  That’s how I sincerely feel about Grave-breaker. Jesus looked more like the story of the love of a Heavenly father than the manger where he was birthed.

I hope to stay faithful to my story and the several stories God is telling with me. To be faithful with the gift of my presence and love, to pray, to forgive, to grow, to learn, to serve and give, and to really do life. 

Our prayer is that this song will be propelling worshippers into their own stories too. The lyrics are our reflection of this God-story that every believer in Jesus can point to- not just as something that happened, but as something that’s still happening. 

Your name is my identity

Your victory’s my authority

Your spirit’s blazing up in me

Your kingdom prospers now in me

Ending our time of prayer that night, I felt grateful to God for what was now in our hand, but I also felt strongly reminded about the beauty and untold possibilities of placing my life in the thick of every God story happening around me.

Grave-Breaker © Sycamore Worship

Words and Music by Tolulope Moody and Oluwaloni Familoni

Release Date: Easter 2020